All Is Well by Me

If you've never heard of Josie Katz and Shmuel (Shmulik) Kraus, you should watch some YouTube clips before sitting down to this movie, because although the movie doesn't include complete songs, music is what both explains the connection between the two spouses (Katz remarks in the movie that the most important thing a man can bring to her is melodies) and explains why the whole population of Israel cares about them. Josie Katz rose to fame as a talented, sexy, dewy-eyed nymph. You could say she was Israel's Mary Tyler Moore. However, try to imagine Mary Tyler Moore paired not with Dick Van Dyke but with Anthony Quinn. Shmuel Kraus was a tortured, pugnacious, uncontrollable man. But he's been compared with John Lennon for his talent at making music seem to arise integrally from a set of lyrics. This documentary is one- sidedly from Katz's point of view, but it tells a convincing story. The story is mildly tragic; it's somewhat like A Star Is Born except that as the old star falls, he brings the new star's career down with his own. Then they both struggle onward. It helps to be familiar with the Israeli entertainment scene surrounding the couple, and of course it helps to know Hebrew, but the subtitles are adequate. Actually they're adequate until the last line of the movie, which quotes a song lyric that would be an especially fine ending if, as the subtitler seems to have thought, it was about finding love. But it's actually about finding work.